Youtube vs High school

Which one would win do you think?

Who will end up more knowledgeable. The high school graduate or the one who learns everything from youtube.

 

Watching stupid videos does not equal education.

 

There are many good educational videos.
And many of them are free to watch

What did you use your high school diploma for?

 

Stepping stone to a bachelor's degree, and two master's degrees. I use skills learned in high school, not only in universities, but also in the workplace.

Yes, there are many good educational videos, but almost no person has the discipline to watch enough of them in a way to produce a rational education.

 

Yeah, I forgot to mention. A high school degree could be useful if you want to go to a university to study a scientific degree.

Are your degrees scientific?

 

The experiment is actually going on with my middle schooler. He comes in often with all kinds of new information even new to me.

 

My Bachelor's is in Biology, my first Master's is in marine biology, and my second master's is in Secondary Education, Biology. No way I could have learned that without a background in math and science from high school.

Most people don't have the motivation to learn on their own. Under your youtube education model, we'd have a population that were experts on watching cat videos. Not many would use it to learn things.

 

But what if someone doesnt want to go to university or went to university and wasted time there on doing things they didnt like/need like me?

 

An eleven year old just pointed at the YouTube homepage and told “Learn stuff!“ wouldn’t get very far. A curated schedule of educational videos would be of some use but alone wouldn’t give anything like the rounded education of any half-decent high school. High school should be as much about teaching students how to learn and assess information as actually building raw knowledge, thought the latter will happen naturally too. Without that grounding, the will be limitations in the usefulness of any pure information source, especially one with so much irrelevant, misleading and outright false material mixed in with it.

 

I had a horrid teacher while taking a college algebra class and wouldn't have passed if it wasn't for YouTube. For that reason alone, YouTube gets my vote.

 

Joe, but I meet so many people with degrees that dont have that grounding and barely can think logically.

 

I have learned more from youtube than high school, but it's apples vs oranges.

Youtube: I learned a lot about gardening, politics & current events, welding, home repairs, repairs on various equipment & appliances, automotive repairs, guitar playing, and so much more.

High School: I learned the basics of reading, writing, and math, but only to a very basic level.

I must add one more source of education...

Computers & Online communications: I further developed my ability to read & comprehend. I dramatically improved my vocabulary, spelling, grammar & punctuation, and general writing skills. Computer programming and use of the various programs taught me to think logically.

Overall, I'd say that time spent in High School was the most inefficient and least effective method compared to Youtube and Computers in general.

 

That’s a different point. You asked who would end up more knowledgeable, not more logical. Logic (or lack of it) is a more inborn characteristic though a quality education can improve it. Regardless, simple watching videos (especially unguided) is never going to make much of an impact in that area.

There will always be bad schools (and bad student for that matter) so there will always be some bad outcomes. That doesn’t mean the underlying system needs to be completely thrown out and certainly doesn’t mean it should be “replaced” with a vague concept based on the popularity of an entertainment platform.

 

And this wonderful American institution called a LIBRARY where you can borrow all kinds of books those are things you hold, open and read turning pages ... ooooooo ... and all this is free and a good source of learning far older and pre-internet.

 

Lets do the maths.
Ask yourself do you remember 1% of your school syllabus?

Thats is around 2 weeks of material. Even when you are tested you wont be able to recall a 2 week of material.

I can watch 100s documentaries a week, and take notes about each like you do. I can even learn the main high school topics, like you do (and I can back it up by buying your high school books).

You retain very little after you leave school.

I dont even have to compete with you! I can choose a topic and learn it through youtube for decades. For example, history. I will simply end more knowledgeable.

Most of my knowledge was accumulated through youtube videos and reading some non-academic books.

High school was good at teaching me psychology mostly. I dont remember the maths very well.

 

Not necessarily consciously but most of us will use more than that even if we don’t realise it. I’m a computer programmer and high-school level maths still forms a basis for a lot of what I do.

That’s a general issue. Why would the source of the information influence how much it is retained? What if a teacher uses a YouTube video as the basis of their lesson? Does it being in a school building override the YouTube magic?

More knowledgeable that who? If someone spent decades learning history in a school-type environment they’d come out with a lot of knowledge too. If someone graduated high-school and then spent the remaining decades learning from other sources, they’d be in a better placed than learning from other sources alone.

Maybe that’s why you’re getting this so wrong.

 

The problem is that when you are a teen, you don't know what you don't need (and you need to learn things that you don't like--I don't particularly like writing essays, but it's a needed skill), so if you just youtube your education, you will learn nothing of true use in the future. If you don't want to go to university, then go to trade school or work unskilled labor, and watch youtube in your spare time.

 

Would you have passed with youtube alone?

 

And I know more people without degrees that can't think logically. Most people with degrees have a general skillset of being able to read, write and analyze.

 

So, you are using your own experience to tell all of us what is relevant. I remember most of the material I learned in high school, albeit at a higher level, since I took college courses on most of the subject areas. Then again, I didn't waste my time in high school with irrelevant courses. I took all the math and science that was intended for college prep. Also, a lot of what you should have learned wasn't factual. It was how to do things academically. Things like learning how to write, how to solve problems, etc. Again, unless you chose to waste your time in high school with irrelevant courses.

Question: What do you do for a living now? Do you have a college degree? Do you have trade skills?

 

We do, and damn if they can't play video games too

 

You dont know how many people there are out there who didnt invest in high school, and have a much much better career than me.

 

I worked as a programmer and then advanced for a hacking position (information security consultancy). Business management degree from Kings College London university.
What are trade skills?

The thread isnt about career.. but we can talk about it briefly.

There is research that found that employers more likely to employ C/C++/Java programmers, if they have a degree. But there are so many other languages that you can learn (on youtube or various other sites like lynda(dot)com) and compete for a job. One of them is C#, the most popular language, I believe. Beyond that the web application market isnt smaller than the desktop/mobile market, which means that there are enough jobs for programmers with no degrees.

How many programmers, for example, are there in Silicon Valley. Have you read the article? - Less than 50%.

About hacking. To be a good hacker it is desirable to start at a young age (16 or 15, below that is also desirable). That is because it takes a long time to be very desirable. You need to know web hacking, networking, system/network configurations, programming, reverse engineering and more. It could take you 10 years to be a good and well demanded hacker.
Even if you decide to have a phd and compete with the good hacker described. You will most likely fail. Because in computer science degrees, they teach you very little information security and there is 0 practice. You might specialize in narrow fields such as Cryptography. But still, thats not enough.

In the future, there might be more demand for hackers who have an electric engineering degree since a lot of things become more electronic and computerized, such as smart homes and computerized cars.
But that would be in the very very far future.

Their salaries are good, and more organization adapted security policies and spent on information security services, to guard themselves against hacking attempts and malware.

 

I learned SQL through free youtube videos. It's a career program.

 

I learnt how to hack from this book "The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws".
It brought me more income than could any other book that I encountered in high school.